Okay, here’s the actual reason I’m changing things up for this review: This episode was quite enjoyable and I thought an easier way for people to determine which subs were best was to do a head-to-head than my standard faire. Kinda like a comedy battle royale.

Yeah, it’s basically a TL Party with analysis. And… it got a lot longer than I was expecting it to be. Maybe I shoulda stuck to the regular reviews.

Note: Watashi asked me to include visual comparisons in this post but goddamn it’s way too long for that. Whine at me and I might give you another post for those.

Conversation

Underwater: Ma’am, I can take it from here, so don’t—
Underwater: Nothing doing!
Underwater: It’s a student’s duty to go to school and study!
Underwater: And it’s a housewife’s duty to stay home and do the laundry!

Watashi: Really, I can do that later. Watashi: No! Watashi: What is a student’s job? To go to school! Watashi: What’s a housewife’s job? To do the laundry!

Yes, both had editing mistakes, but Watashi’s phrasing was more clever.

Watashi: I was freaking out so much, I forgot!
Watashi: Today’s the day, Ryuko!
Watashi: “The day?”
Watashi: Hello? The day!

.

Underwater: All the more reason to go to school! There’s lots of friends there!
Underwater: There’s nothing but enemies, and you know it!

Watashi: We’ve really got to get you to school. That’s where your real friends are! Watashi: They’re all enemies!

I really don’t like either groups’ lines here, but I suppose Watashi’s “That’s where your real friends are!” line overrode their shitty “They’re all enemies!” comeback.

Characterization

There’s a lot of characters so I just spoilered each. I tried to pick out the most representative lines from each person.

Ryuko.

Spoiler:

Underwater: Calm down, Mako!
Underwater: It’s 4AM.

Watashi: Take it down a notch, Mako. It’s four in the morning!

Watashi’s phrasing was just far more complete.

Underwater: He’s screwing with us. Come on, Mako!

Watashi: He thinks he’s so bad.Watashi: Let’s go, Mako!

If you don’t smile at Watashi’s line, I don’t think you’ll smile at anything.

Underwater: Maiko, you can be pretty bad-ass, you know that?

Watashi: Well look at you, Maiko.

What, you thought I’d go with Underwater’s just cuz it has “ass” in it? Not so! You can actually read Watashi’s line in your head as what she’s saying. The flow of the phrase is immaculate.

Underwater: As if a deceitful bitch like you could transform so easily!

Watashi: Please. You can’t transform with that black heart of yours!

Jesus, Underwater. She’s smug, not a cunt.

Underwater: I had so much trouble mastering the Life Fiber Synchronization, but she just pulled it off!

Watashi: She did in a few seconds what took me days to achieve!

Underwater, try a bit harder. {TL Note: Underwater actually tried pretty hard here. They had a comment in their script bragging about how lulzy their “pun” was.} {TL Note 2: The “pun” didn’t even work since she only “pulled off” her old clothes, not Senketsu.}

Mako.

Spoiler:

Underwater: You gave your uniform a name? Underwater: Wow, you must really be lonely!

Watashi: Do you name your clothes, Ryuko?
Watashi: Aw, that’s so sad!

Underwater.

Underwater: Shocker!

Watashi: Holy crackers!

That’s just good, clean scriptwriting fun.

Underwater: Ryuuko, this is way fun!
Underwater: Feels so good…

Watashi: Ryuko, this is such a rush!Watashi: The highest of highs.

I would’ve liked a masturbation joke here, but I suppose Watashi’s’ll do.

Underwater: Yay, we’re all friends!

Watashi: Friendsies!

Mako’s a ditz. Watashi gave us language that reflected that. Underwater didn’t.

Underwater: O! M! G!

Watashi: Holy cow!

It’s not like Watashi had a bad line here; Underwater just played it off better.

Dialogue: 9,0:08:19.13,0:08:21.60,Default,,0,0,0,,Barazou the back-alley doctor is coming through!
Dialogue: 9,0:08:21.60,0:08:24.52,Default,,0,0,0,,Anybody who doesn’t get out of the way gets a Caesarian, men included!

Dialogue: 0,0:08:18.56,0:08:21.68,Default,,0,0,0,,Back Alley Doc Barazo, coming through! Dialogue: 0,0:08:21.68,0:08:24.86,Default,,0,0,0,,Anyone who doesn’t move is in for a C-section! Even the guys!

This coulda gone either way, but “C-section” is more common to hear than “Caesarian”, so I gave the nod to Watashi.

Underwater: Your dad is done for… Underwater: Matarou, I have a favor to ask of you, man-to-man… Underwater: Take this uniform and—

Man-to-dog is pretty smart, especially having it play off the previous line. Watashi also tries to link it back, but “manly dog” doesn’t work quite as well either on its own or as a callback.

Terminology

Underwater: No-Late Day

Watashi: No Tardies Day

I shouldn’t even have to explain this one.

Underwater: What’s with this mass migration?

Watashi: What’s with the migrating herd?

No contest.

Underwater: Behold the Disciplinary Bureau’s mighty barrier!

Watashi: Behold! The Disciplinary Squad’s great gate path!

If you watch the episode, you’ll see they actually walk on that thing. Not much of a barrier if it’s a fucking paved road, now is it?

Underwater: Pseudo-homeroom.

Watashi: An artificial homeroom.

Can I have neither? Why not “mock homeroom”? We’ll go with Watashi’s, though. I don’t like how Underwater connected “pseudo” into “homeroom”.

Underwater: The strength! The power! The strepower!

Watashi: The superness!Watashi: The power!Watashi: The superpower!

Underwater, that’s not acceptable.

Underwater: Master Gamagoori!

Watashi: Gamagori, sir?

If I were dropping the honorifics like most super-great-we’re-the-best-ever groups seem to think is the way to go these days, I’d have this as “Mr. Gamagori”. As-is, Watashi’s line sounds more like what a native speaker would say. Underwater, if you’re gonna be weird about the language, why not keep the honorifics in?

The two groups that only edited this (Commie and Underwater) went with 2-A while the two original translations (Crunchyroll and Watashi) went with 2-K.

Underwater: This station’s for the nonstop rope expresso-way to school!
Underwater: It’s for the super rich! We No-Stars couldn’t hope to ride it in a million years!

Watashi: It’s a Rope Expressway That Us Starless Would Never Get a Chance to Ride: The Station!

The reason I’m giving the nod to Watashi here is that status is the only currency in this town. Wealth is dependent on status, and you seem to be missing that point here. Not that I’m all about Watashi’s phrasing, though.

Watashi: I guess I’ll just have to leave some of my precious croquettes I packed for lunch.

She clearly sets them out one at a time. If she was going to leave her entire lunch, she’d just drop the lunch box down.

tl;dr:

Watashi pretty much took this one away. It wasn’t a complete sweep, but if you wanna really get all you can outta this show, the choice is rather obvious.

Underwater, your editing is pretty good as my earlier review pointed off, but if you’re working off a mediocre script it’s gonna show when alternate translations like this come out. Watashi just delivers a better product.

Gamagori strikes me as the guy who’s way too disciplined to utter vulgar words like ‘ass’, I think that’s a copout from the translators. IMO if he said those words he’d be going against the discipline he wants to establish in the school, *that* would be an insult to his Lady Satsuki-sama.
I really enjoy the lines UW gives him, because they’re usually so so so so full of dramatized vocabulary that really fits his hardass personality, if that makes any sense.

Then again, it’s a matter of personal taste bla bla what you think of those characters bla bla

Watashi: Errors – 4 majors, 8 minors, Script Quality – Good, Grade – D – A number of lines in this release were excellent, but more often than not, they had too much fun with the script and changed, added, or omitted information provided in the show.

As it has been pointed out, that was the first episode which did contain several errors. Wasn’t the best planned first episode, it was done with basically no staff. The errors have been fixed for v2’s with proper encodes for the batch.

The only scenes which had notable differences that had any sort of conclusion to be drawn from were the ones I put up here. I can’t say I got a significantly different understanding of the plot when watching Watashi’s 04 than I did when watching yours. And I’m sure 8th’s review was a fair interpretation but there are certainly many reasons why I don’t review 01s from groups, especially not new ones.

Again, this review isn’t so much a slam on your group so much as it is me saying that I liked how Watashi handled this episode more often. Your group did what I’d expect from a standard, no-TLC Crunchyedit and my 03 review was not an unjustified A-tier.

I would have preferred “tardiness”, since “chikoku” translates to that well in both cases you highlighted. Watashi put some effort in, but they still messed it up. “No Tardies Day” would be a day where either no tardiness happened or no tardiness was tracked. “No-Late Day” is so outside the norm of native English that it doesn’t bring any particular meaning to mind, which makes it stronger than Watashi’s line (if we ignore that hyphen). The only really acceptable answers to me would be: “No-Being-Late Day” (C), “No Being Late Day” (B), or “No Tardiness Day” (A).

I actually liked CrunchyRoll/Underwater’s “strepower” since she made a weird portmanteau in the audio.

“Master Gamagoori”: I’m surprised you didn’t point this out in your review, but in English, using “master” before someone’s name is anywhere between “-bocchan” and “-kun”. She dropped a “-sama”, which is so far removed from those diminutives, Underwater may as well have used “miss”.

Your interpretation of what “No Tardies day” means is pretty bizarre. Perhaps you’re unaware that in a number of school systems tardies/tardys are a type of demerit that students receive for being late. As such its clear that “No tardies day” means a day on which you’re not allowed to earn such a demerit.

I am and was well aware of the use of “tardies” in this context, as such was the case in the schools I attended. It was in reference to this context that I made my comment. The word “tardies” refers to the demerit rather than the action of being late, so the most logical grammatically correct interpretation of “No Tardies Day” is that it’s a day where no demerits will be earned for lateness. I apologize for assuming that anyone reading would know that using “tardies” in that context implied that I was aware of that meaning. I’ll be sure to include parenthetical remarks in future comments after each word over three letters explaining the meaning and stating that I do, in fact, understand the context in which the word is used.

I never said that Watashi’s line couldn’t be puzzled out from context, I said it was grammatically incorrect. As tardies are the demerit received, a “No Tardies Day” would be a day in which no such demerits were given. I guess I was under the mistaken impression that the rules of grammar were still in effect. Now that I know they aren’t, I wishing have nice you day.